What is “dogmatic feminism”? It turns out it’s not dogmatic at all, it’s stating things in strong terms. Well it’s too bad that Becky called it dogmatism then, because that’s a different thing, and much more blameworthy than stating things in strong terms.

A comment on Bad analogies are bad pointed out another strange claim of Becky’s, and I belatedly got curious enough to take a look.

Becky’s claim:

In Stephanie’s post addressing our episode, you in three words reveal your tacit agreement with one of the most egregious characterizations of atheist men I’ve seen condensed into one paragraph (the 5th, if you’re following the links), bolstering an us-versus-them mentality.

The “one of the most egregious characterizations of atheist … Read the rest

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I keep meaning (and wanting) to get back to more usual subjects – violence against women, persecution of “blasphemers,” bishops telling everyone what to do – but more shrapnel keeps coming in, so I keep reporting on it.

I could do the other thing. I could ignore it. I could skirt around it, leaving names out.

But I don’t think that’s the way to deal with bullying. There’s been a lot of discussion of this lately, with regard to the bullying of gays, atheists, women – lots of Others – and there’s a pretty strong consensus that advice to “ignore it” just lets it go on. It’s not Buddhist or Tolstoyan or pacifist, it’s lazy and callous and status quo-protecting.… Read the rest

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Oh good – this just in – another “bitchez need to stfu about all this sexual harassment shit” announcement, from a Dr Marty Klein.

He cleaned up the facts about the harassment to improve his case though. That’s naughty, Dr Marty Klein.

I recently attended the national conference of a large progressive organization. It was well-organized, stimulating, and fun. The people were mostly energetic, interesting, and friendly; it was a good mix of ages, sexual orientations, and divided almost 50/50 male-female.

I was eventually asked, as a sex therapist, what I thought about Sexual Harassment. Apparently a couple at last year’s conference had gotten friendly with a particular woman in her mid-30s. Eventually “Mary & John” handed the woman

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I sent Travis Roy a message on Facebook. (He’s not a friend, but you can send messages to people who aren’t friends. That’s convenient sometimes.) He’s the guy who announced on that “Great Penis Debate” that I compared TAM to Nazi Germany, which is not true. I asked him where he got that piece of misinformation.

The only place I’ve seen it via Google is on a stupid wiki set up by ERV people (and places they’ve dropped it lately, such as Ask an Atheist). I’m curious about how much success they’re having in spreading malicious falsehoods.

Maybe for my TAM talk I’ll just say “I did not compare TAM to Nazi Germany” as many times as I can in … Read the rest

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Update June 18 8:29 a.m.: I modified two items in Act II to reflect later discussion and amplification, including one of the two complainants. They didn’t see him taking photos up skirts, they saw him walking around with a camera on a monopole held at his ankle pointing up. The guy in question – Buzz0 – has also been commenting on the Facebook post.

One of the things I didn’t get to in the hail of shrapnel yesterday – a Facebook post describing two incidents of sexual harassment at TAM.

Act I:  TAM 2009

I notice an outrageously drunk conferee hitting on a non-conferee in the Del Mar Lounge.  She was at the stage of being quite anxious but

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And then there’s a bunch of guys doing a video about how stupid and awful women who talk about harassment are. I haven’t watched it (and oh god do I not want to) but it’s partly transcribed, and what’s there is awful. It’s so awful, and the comments by one of the guys involved with it are so awful, that the combination had me slamming on the brakes and deciding (again) that I can’t do a talk at TAM.

But there are people who tell me they decided to go partly because I’m going to be there, and I would feel like a worm if I didn’t go, so I took the brakes off again. But this stuff is … Read the rest

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